“I’m a Mad Dog Biting Myself for Sympathy” by Louise Erdrich is a first-person point of view story, where the narrator talks about this incident of him stealing this stuffed toucan. Through the story, you can see many explains of him feeling the loss in his life, and him struggling with change. The narrator makes bad choice after bad choice; first, he steals a stuffed toucan from a store. Then proceeds to run with this large toucan, and steals a car, which he finds out that has a baby inside, then gets stuck in a ditch and leaves the car and baby behind, and then finally gets caught. This all spans from him wanting to get his supposed girlfriend Dawn a Christmas present. Towards the end of the story, we learn that Dawn is living with another guy, possibly her new boyfriend. This is where the theme of loss begins to come in. Not all has he lost is his girlfriend, he has lost relations with his family it seems as well. “My parents. It’s not like I hate them or anything. I just can’t see them.” He does not have a good relationship with his parents, this tells us that he is hurt emotionally. …show more content…
He continues on saying “By now he has probably taken her places, shown her restaurants and zoos, gone camping in the wilderness, skied.” We can tell from this that he is emotional and most likely jealous of this new older guy that Dawn has. He also tries to find a scapegoat from the trouble he has caused and says, “You could say she got me into this, so Dawn should get me out.” He tries to blame his actions of stealing on Dawn because he was simply just getting her a Christmas present. He has not gotten over her and seems to be having a really hard time getting over Dawn. So, he becomes careless and reckless with his